


Artemis

by fire_is_my_happy_place



Series: Myth Shorts [4]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/F, Hunting, Religious Themes, Spiritualism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:26:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4825532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_is_my_happy_place/pseuds/fire_is_my_happy_place
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love story of sorts between the high priestess of a temple of Artemis and a girl fleeing an arranged marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artemis

She came to the temple early in the morning, bringing such offerings as might any poor woman—a round of dark bread, a bruised apple, sometimes nothing more than a hank of her black hair. I watched her lay them on the low stone and look up into my lady's eyes, praying not aloud, but in some silent recess. Weeks passed that way, the first light of dawn pinking the sky as she walked through the gates to kneel and sit, spending some time thus before rising, still early, to go.

After a moon cycle, I stopped her simply by the stripes on my robes, stepping out from behind the pillar I had sheltered against after the dawn evocation. “Your petition. Does it go well?”

Her voice was low, the accent of the hills broadening it. “I have patience.”

The gods appreciate patience in petitioners and boldness in their priests—of this, I have no doubt. Having served Artemis for these many years, I know her to be bold when it pleases her. “For what,” I asked, “do you seek her attention?”

She looked at me then, eyes of stone and rain, the gray of the slate from which she came. “Does  _pietas erga parentes_  encompass all?”

On observing her more closely, I could see it—the hand of my goddess on her, eyes shining like the dark luster of a doe. She was poised to flight.

“You ask to whom you owe the most duty. Of what does your heart speak?”

She did not answer me, but in the ragged tresses slipping from her scarf I could see grass seed, leaves and fragments of vine. I reached out then, pushing back her scarf, and she permitted it—already partially shorn, her hair carried the wilderness. What was left was tied back with a bowstring. Omens, then. My goddess speaks to my eyes and I am not such a fool that I do not listen.

“What would your father have of you,” I asked, voice soft.

“There is a man,” she said. “A marriage. He is not a bad man, I think.”

“Do you remain chaste?”

Those eyes, wild as the winter sky—she needed no answer be made. That which lived inside her hunted even now, restlessly, to be away.

“Who is your father?” The name she gave did not matter. I know whom Artemis has marked. This one is hers and ours.

I gave her shelter in the temple so that she would not have to leave and she took it, roaming the halls until I gave her a bow and set her to the straw targets. She sunk arrow after arrow in their center, sighing a gentle breeze in the breaks of the wind as she cast. I gave her the option of hiding when her father came, but like the rest of us, she would not take it.

He came at midday, finding me eating with her—a haunch of wild goat and garlic, the purpled stains of blackberries on our fingers. We have a rule that we do not tell: we eat most what we catch, flavored with the bitter gall of the chase. Artemis favors us where we do, in all things, honor her passions.

He brought with him the priest of Zeus, my lady’s divine father. The man wore his mask of judgment, golden and stern.

“To her father,” the priest said, “must she be surrendered. To the divine order must she be obedient.”

I laughed at him then. I could not help it. Our lady gathers one of us to her rarely. Greek virgins pray to her often enough, then go easily to Aphrodite and Hera when the time comes. But what our lady reaches out for, she keeps. I told him this, gently as I might, and he ignored me. It is often thus.

Her father reached out for her arm, fingers made talons, and I gripped his wrist. A mystery of my lady that would be obvious if men were to but look at it: a hunter is not soft. I to my place rose from decades of roaming the world in its lonely places. He pushed at me but did not find me yielding.

A hunter does not yield.

To the priest, I made my response: the bowstring and the targets behind us, her eyes the color of the hills, the musk of the hunt on her body, the hands that even now clutched her bow. I could not see his face beneath the mask, but I know what I saw in his body.

We all defy our fathers who stay here, as our lady defied hers on occasion. They left disappointed.

Another of our mysteries did I show her. At the new moon, after days of fasting, do we take tea made of a flower from the high places. We hunt each night until the moon pours herself silver over the world. Those whom Artemis wishes to keep go forth into the night alone, bow and arrows in hand, and bring back bounty by her hand. I have done this many times, the night alive around me, my lady’s breath on my skin as I crept through the caress of the bushes.

I followed the girl though she knew me not, curious to see what my lady would have of someone she had thus marked.

In the faint starlight, she moved as a leopard, slipping as easily from the temple grounds and into the cypress groves as one might a still pool. My lady was strong upon her, and she crouched in the deeper darkness of a tree before releasing a shaft. The rabbit she finished quickly with the arrow’s head, draining its blood and hanging it from her belt. She stopped then, head up to the sky, eyes closed. Had I not known her to be flesh and met her father, I would have thought her a spirit carved of marble, the bare skin of her calves and arms glowing. She turned then, though I did not move, and sought me out.

The tea we give them lets them walk the spirit world. I should have known she would see me.

“ _Ameilikhos_ ,” she said softly. Relentless and so I am, though she did not know me well enough to know it.

I smiled at her then, my lady appearing in the flesh to speak to me. My heart sang with my blood. “I am honored,” I said softly, as the night demanded.

“The hunt calls,” she said, the invocation which we speak to start the night.

“And I answer.” These are the words by which we close it.

She crossed the few steps between us then and pressed her lips to mine, still bitter with the tea. Artemis forbids us some things, and the father gods and their temples forbid us speak of others. This my lady allows us, knowing that the love of the hunt sings in our veins like wine.

How sweet her mouth, even with the bitterness of the tea. I am taller than she, taller than many, browned in my strength but not lithe, and she rose against me like a reed, swaying. I pulled the bow from her unresisting fingers and placed the rabbit beside it.

“Artemis, do we call thee and answer,” I said to the spirit within her. “Artemis, do we honor bring to the hunt.”

She reached for the bowstring and loosed it, her hair of many ends. I have shorn mine these twenty years—Artemis does not care for the glories of men and it fouls the bow.

I cannot help but believe my lady rewards me. In the time since I rose to the head of her temple, I have taken no company. My lady is always and ever first, and I have not felt moved by any who seek her out.

“Artemis, thou has blessed me,” I whispered as she loosed her belt and shrugged away the cloth about her. Hers was the body of a hunter—the small high breasts and strength of one who can run down prey. It took me little time to shed my own robes and make a bed beneath us. For a moment, we regarded each other. There is little spare on me. I seek my lady as often as I may and spend many nights with her, in her country.

I drew her down with me, that spare body. The tea I supped from her lips turned the night into a stream around us, full of subtle current.

In this, I had much to teach her. I did with a song in my heart and on my lips. Between her thighs, I whispered it. “In praise of the wild, in praise of the hunter. In praise of the moon and her austere beauty, the tides she placed in our blood."

Sweet she was, and with my body did I give her benediction.

She cried out, a high sound like a hunting hawk, as I spoke to her with tongue and fingers. In the abandon of her innocence, I expected from her nothing. She gave me everything, hungrily, again and again reaching for me.

I prayed as the last rose in me, thanking my lady for the tide which broke the dam of my loneliness. That which men judge profane is sacred when the gods wish it.

We lay together for a time, watching dawn make of the sky a gemmed dome. On the way back, we washed in a stream, enraptured and inattentive to the world around. It mattered not. My lady and I do not suffer trespass, and I have with my bow demonstrated that a woman alone is not safe to ravage—I dare say that there is not a woman or child for miles but knows they may wander as they please.

I watch after my own and my lady watches after me.

We came to the temple gates holding hands. Let the priests complain. Let them make comments about nature and duty. Let the temple see us, I care not.

My lady loves me and I her. That which she claims does she keep.


End file.
